Dirty

There are those who would say I’m dirty. My last

shower lost in time’s hot moisture. My last shave

sharply apparent. The quality of my presentation

dismissible amongst the plastic plates and trampled

cardboard of the dust drenched city streets, where

moral character is second to house number, bank

balance, and suit pieces. My greasy mop unfit to wash

exhaustion from the purchased floors of tired travelers. They

themselves expecting the squeaky clean demeanor

of quality service to grease their squeaky wheels. My

sprawling ears and multitasked smile giving them every

opportunity to lament through the lingering sensation

of humanity they can’t seem to remove from the holes in

their head, even through their constructed, plastic barriers.

Their talk of the obvious reality they’ve settled for does

nothing to change the fact I don’t know how to change

the linens in their room. My eyes sullen, still bright

from the hopes of witnessing another fantastic dawn on

the confluence, soft, flowing with the power to shape

nation’s histories, so far away from the rising tide of their

speech. Most would admit, themselves, to not bathing

in its apparently unending magnificence. They feel they

are not dirtied by it, simply because of their distance from

it, and still they languish in the spewing filth of their wasted,

radiated, polluted, and apparently unending flow of words.

We are here now because the trepidatious braved the grim

uncharted to find such an excellent fortification. Centuries

later my silence is under attack at all hours. The weak

ammunition assaulting the battlements which took lifetimes

to build to Heaven, foundations forged in the pit of survival,

piled for eons with so many invisible books, swaying in the

simple harmonic motion of so many unnecessarily fired shots.

The war is over. Humans won. But humanity on the front lines

is too busy reloading its musket to read the messenger’s face,

too enthralled by headlines to empathize with the shelled rubble

of ancient Rome, laughing with closed eyes at reality star’s

tweets, not realizing the dark hue and iron taste is the blood of

the red wheel barrow rusting, and it leaks through the cracks

in the dried skin of their clawing, worn thumbs, having bit

their tongues clean off long ago on some side mouthed insult

of someone they, apparently, love, or someone they never saw

again, wondering why no one listens to their volumed attempts

for attention, waving their right to embrace silence, lacquered,

thrashing about in putrid piles of sharp, infected, single use

words, despite the surgeon general’s warning, plunging them

into the chipping asphalt like so many municipal Marches

revealing cobblestone in its beaten actuality for miles and

miles but getting no closer to where they wished they were,

horns blaring in the rush hour red light grid lock mad

at the mechanic, on his time, trying to fix their blown tires, hands

slick in their teenaged spray, lubricated, ignoring the effectiveness

of liberal use. They wouldn’t use a whole tube of toothpaste for

one brushing. That’s wasteful. Or a whole tank of hot water, and

a bottle soap to wash the dishes. Well guess what? I do.